“Inspectors found that the hospital staff used restraints fairly routinely in the hospital’s child and adolescent units without doctor’s orders, without documenting their use and without developing better ways to calm the patients.”

IntraCare CEO Terry Scovill says the problem wasn’t that staffers used restraint techniques per se, or used them abusively – rather the staffers weren’t documenting the incidents properly.

“We kind of plead our case, and said ‘Look we haven’t hurt anybody, we haven’t actually done a restraint incorrectly, there’s never been a bad outcome, this is 100 percent a paperwork issue.’”

But Moos says the deficiencies still posed a danger to the patients and also to the staff.

Scovill says that without Medicare payments, the hospital lost 80 percent of its revenue. He had to lay off dozens of workers, and patients are being transferred to a sister facility in north Harris County.

That hospital has its own certification and was not involved in the investigation.

“We feel bad about losing the 35 beds for the community. We know it’s going to be a hardship and it’s going to be tough for the patients and we really feel bad about losing a facility in the Med Center because we had a huge number of patients that walked into this facility because of where we were.”